The objectives cover both basic and applied aspects of mycoplasms and related wall-free prokaryotes, including their neurotoxins and other biological factors involved in virulence, their immunological interrelationships, and their possible role in human infection or in diseases of uncertain etiology. Current projects of interest involve the characterization of a newly-isolated spiroplasma, its pathogenicity for primates and other animal hosts, and sero-epidemiological studies on possible host distribution of the organism, including serological test on paired human sera from a variety of neurological diseases and normal human sera from selected age groups.